ArticleBMC medical education2026
"We are blind to quite a lot of things": perspectives of a communications curriculum enlisting persons with disability (PWD) as patient educators and its impact on medical professional identity formation.
Article in BMC medical education, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAttitudinal barriers toward persons with disability (PWD) persist in healthcare systems, with lack of awareness and experience impeding optimal treatment of PWD. Medical professional identity formation, which can be described as the transformative integration of both clinical acumen and humanistic attitudes, needs to include exposure to and interactions with PWD. A communications workshop was devised for third-year medical students with PWD enlisted as patient educators. We aimed to understand students' and tutors' perspectives of the workshop, the meaning they gained from interacting with PWD, and how the workshop contributed to their professional identity formation.
methodsSemi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 13 students and 7 tutors, and analysed with thematic analysis following an inductive approach until reaching thematic saturation. Coding occurred independently, and researchers met to discuss their findings and integrate different perspectives and codes into a final set of themes and subthemes.
resultsThemes derived included how medical students and tutors started their medical education journey with an aspiration to care; how values that contribute to professional identity formation are acquired in a learning community (direct experience, modelling behaviour, reflection and through authentic conversation); the educational value of PWD as patient educators in medical training (the historical absence of disability in curriculum, tutors co-learning with students from PWD educators, the uncertainty of long-term impact); and the impact of the PWD educator patient voice in professional identity formation.
conclusionsThe PWD educator voice may develop sensitivity and empathy for PWD. First person narratives of their perspectives, challenges, and triumphs has the potential to challenge learners' preconceived notions, strengthen confidence of learners in interacting with PWD, and promote social inclusiveness of PWD as a facet of ongoing student and clinician professional identity formation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.